How to use utility data to drive energy cost savings

You. Yes, you, are sitting on an absolute gold mine of information. You have the ability to drive real energy cost savings from your utility data. You just need to know where to look.

What kind of utility data holds the key to energy cost savings?

You can find ways to deliver low cost, high value savings to your organization by looking at:

15, 30 or hourly interval data;

detailed delivery cost information (not at the total bill level, but at the detail level);

detailed supply cost information (again, not in aggregate, but separated by supply components);

multi-year data on cost and usage, if available;

key performance metrics using the disaggregated delivery and supply costs, among others.

There is a gold mine of information in your utility data

You would think that this information should be easily accessible to energy decision makers. Unfortunately, it is not. Rarely can you find all this information without doing a lot of heavy lifting. There are organizations and tools available, including MWh, that can help you. No matter how challenging, it is worth the effort, because significant savings can be gleaned from small improvements. What do we mean? Let’s explore further.

What you should be looking for?

Let’s review what you should be looking for. The goal of a thorough review of your utility data is to find low cost, high return measures that:

lower your energy costs;

drive future investment;

lower your carbon footprint;

improve sustainability measures;

and enhance the overall value of your business.

Each organization will see different results. Here are a few clues that energy cost savings improvements are available to you:

For usage data, any unanticipated change in trends between one period and the next– which will inevitably lead to more questions about your operation;

Any cost/usage deviation from industry standard benchmarks for your type of business;

Any change in the key performance metrics (described above) from one period (day, week, month, season, year) to the next;

When comparing your organization to industry benchmarks, beware of major deviations on measures like capacity factor, power factor, fuel utilization factors, etc.

So, once you’ve conducted the review what can you do about these issues? In our experience, just about every organization has the ability to make small improvements in their operations that can yield meaningful results.

What kind of barriers prevent these basic changes from taking hold?

First of all, customers often lack easy access to the data. Gathering this information takes a lot more time than it should. Secondly, if these improvements aren’t integrated into operational work schedules, people do not make the time to get the work done. Finally, once the data and the time to review it are available, sometimes people don’t know what to look for. They don’t have the experience to identify these improvements.

Bottom line for energy and financial decision makers: Most of the secrets to cost-effective energy management lie in your goldmine of utility data. Don’t delay getting access to that data and reviewing it carefully. Let us know if you’d like help or are interested in getting more information about guaranteed access to cost-effective energy savings.